Hi Mark

Yes, I use preamps on both 70cm and 2m as my antennas are more than 30 m away on the top of the hill. About 10db gain on 2m to overcome cable losses. A noticeable effect in ZL is that as AO-85 is travelling South to North, often there comes a point late in the pass where it is virtually impossible to access the transponder. This sometimes happens so suddenly that the first couple of times I thought the transponder must have shut down. The same effect has been noticed in VK as well, and the assumption is that it is related to antenna orientation in the Southern hemisphere. The North to South passes are in the early hours of the morning here at the moment so I have not had the opportunity to see what happens there.

73 Alan ZL2BX From: Mark L. Hammond Sent: Monday, November 9, 2015 9:37 PM To: Alan Cresswell ; Amsat - BBs Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] AO-85 Testing November 8 and 9

Thanks, Alan. I wish I could report good successes with 2.5W. I'm still trying to find the right combinations...orientation/attitude of the bird surely fits into the picture.

You have a 2M preamp I suppose?

Mark N8MH

On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 4:12 PM, alancresswell@xtra.co.nz wrote:

Hi Mark,

Well another pass to report. 09-11-15 at AOS 2035, 58 Deg El. As before , No telemetry, no tone required, solid response from transponder. Uplink 2.5w to nominal 15db yagi. Up FMN, down FMN. Downlink crossed 10 el Yagi. Downlink signal pushing my TS-2000 to full scale - S9 + 60db for most of the pass.

Hope that helps. 73 Alan ZL2BX

-----Original Message----- From: Mark L. Hammond Sent: Monday, November 9, 2015 8:32 PM To: Amsat - BBs Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] AO-85 Testing November 8 and 9

Thanks for the report, Alan. The Command Team really appreciates reports like this during our testing....keep the reports coming!

73,

Mark N8MH

_____________ Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2015 19:16:42 -0000 From: alancresswell@xtra.co.nz To: "AMSAT-BB" amsat-bb@amsat.org Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] AO-85 Testing November 8 and 9 Message-ID: 5E2C7101606047E89E91998406543C94@SATELLITE2 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="utf-8"; reply-type=original

AO-85 Orbit 461 No telemetry, No tone required for access. Excellent signal from the transponder on the 1855 UT 15 deg pass over ZL this morning.

Alan ZL2BX

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